Vieques Residents, Scientists Point To Toxic Legacy Of Navy's Activity

Manolin Portella owned the little market in town. Varo Comas moved back after retiring on the mainland. Minerva Bermudez, just married, was raising two small children.

All are dead now, felled by the cancer that stalks residents of Vieques at a higher rate than in the rest of Puerto Rico. Each is remembered with a simple white cross outside the chain-link fence that surrounds the Navy firing range at Camp Garcia. More than 50 such markers rise from the tall grass along Highway 997.

For the deaths, many on Vieques blame the heavy metals, solvents, chemicals and other potentially harmful materials introduced on the otherwise quiet Caribbean island during more than five decades of military exercises.

The Navy has confirmed the end of training on Vieques by May 1, but plans for the land remain far from resolved. While the Carrier Battle Group USS Theodore Roosevelt completes what officials say will be the last round of exercises on Vieques, both the Navy and the activists who campaigned against the practice bombings are bracing for the next phase of the dispute: the cleanup.

Under current legislation, the Navy is to turn the land over to the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the agencies are to work together to address environmental contamination. Gov. Sila M. Calderon has appointed a commission to represent Puerto Rico. Activists are demanding a role in the discussions.

``There is a plethora of deadly military toxins here,'' says Roberto Rabin, a leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques. ``If there's no decontamination, even if the Navy didn't drop another bomb, they would go on killing us for decades.''

The Navy says periodic exercises at Camp Garcia have not endangered public health on the island of 9,100 mostly poor inhabitants. Studies have indicated elevated levels of contaminants in the water, food chain and population and higher-than-normal rates of cancer, but direct linkages are difficult to prove.

Locals know the 20-mile-long sliver of land as la Isla Nena -- the ``baby island'' of lush green mountains and white sand beaches rising from the turquoise waters off the eastern tip of Puerto Rico. Families on Vieques fish, raise cattle or cater to tourists. More than a quarter of the workforce is unemployed.

The Navy has been on Vieques since World War II, using the eastern end of the island for periodic bombing practice.

During the 1990s, the Navy reported levels of the heavy metals arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, manganese and mercury sometimes hundreds of times higher than limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency in the waters around the island.

Heavy metals -- often found in military munitions -- can remain in human tissue for years. Some may be associated with asthma and illnesses of the central nervous system, kidneys, lungs, heart and brain. Prolonged exposure to abnormal levels of arsenic, cadmium and chromium has been linked to cancer.

Studies by the commonwealth government have indicated a higher-than-normal rate of cancer on Vieques. Islanders say they also suffer abnormally from asthma, skin conditions, neonatal mortality and birth defects. The Navy did not respond to several requests to comment on environmental contamination or health problems on Vieques for this report.